All's Fair -- Part VI
Your response to Lawrence and the angry mob is quick and unsparingly direct. "I noticed you did not join in until the dog was wounded. If Gervaise is to be beaten, so shall the rest of you!"
The mob goes silent at having their insecurities so openly laid bare. You scan the faces among them, and confirm that no one demanding punishment can meet your gaze, then you continue with your sharp rebuke. "Tell me, how much courage did it take to shy away while I confronted the hound? How much courage does it take to beat one who has shown that he has no way of fighting back, especially when you outnumber him so? The duty of a knight is to defend the weak, not to harm them. This boy shall not be harmed, and any who do so shall be expelled from this order. An attack on my subjects is an attack on me. Remember that!"
You turn to Gervaise, "You are not a knight, or a warrior of any variety. Therefore we recognise you as a civilian aide under our protection. Our scribe. But do not expect equal footing with a knight." Gervaise, still eye-wided at his close brush with mob justice, throws himself to the ground with gratitude.
After the verdict, the rest of the night witnesses a division of your band into two estranged camps: a self-satisfied group, those with some claim to direct participation in the fight, reliving and embellishing their roles to each other, showing their scratches proudly; and another slightly larger group, accusing each other of having been farther behind, or even more afraid.
You yourself are not without fears. Those hungry bloodshot eyes, those fangs, those claws, that moment when you thought yourself dead--all will pursue you into your dreams, no doubt. Even awake, the helpless feeling when the hound stood over your body returns over and over, making you vow never to be weak and defenceless again. However, more urgently than all these terrors, you fear Mother learning about your dangerous escapades and reining in the freedom of your band. You send Rick Scullion into the main encampment overnight to listen to the gossip among the adults, many of whom have begun their drunken revelry early.
The next morning he comes back with good news: no one seems to have heard--and, in fact, the talk of the tongue-waggers is set aflame by another event entirely. Several carts were led away by a gang of thieves during the detour near the Sluice. Opinion on the thieves' haul varies. Some say silks from fabled Catay; others, mystical reagents from the sandy wastes of Souk; a few, with but paltry creative flair, maintain that it was a shipment of fine weapons up from Torchester. The horns blow twice for departure, ending all speculation.
***
The third day of travel shows the lush lands of Feroshire and its local people to good advantage. So close to the fairgrounds, road traffic has grown extremely clogged. All the carts and convoys of lesser folk must be halted and pushed aside as your Mother's procession whisks past in great pomp, unhindered. Thus the roadside is thickly-lined with prosperous men and their pregnant wives, many of them already dandling fat babies on their knees. Most grin and wave good-naturedly at the interruption to their journey. At times during your travel, when encountering dark forests and charred ruins, empty fields and throngs of desperate refugees, you had thought the outside world a scary place, but not here. Whatever ills struck the outside world had spared this place and its inhabitants.
In contrast to the locals going to the festival, you spot other folk with fiery red hair and dusky skin still labouring out in the fields, pulling in the last harvests. Brother Herman informs you, "Those are the Kampchuk in their own barbarous language. Vulgarly, locals call them Baabar. We used to call them Sea Raiders, although they do none of that now. Now they work the land to make amends for their former evils. Your father died fighting such as these." The specimens that you see, scraggy and bent, do not excite your imagination in that regard, and you quickly turn away. Still, you realise that you know absolutely nothing about Father's last battle. Other than a name, Mumsford Mound.
The fourth and final day of travel is mercifully short, when the carriage soon crests a ridgeline and descends into a shallow valley packed with wondrous sights.
A single massive round tower of pale yellow brick, roofed with dark blue shingles, stands guard between the bank of the river Parlon and the base of a small hill packed with buildings of similar material; the six-storey tower anchors the end point of an impressive curtain wall five times too long for the small hilltop city that it encloses. The vacant area inside the capacious wall is now filled up with hundreds of gaudy tents, pavilions and market stalls, with streaming banners and pennants and shields, a dense variegated forest of heraldry, so diverse and bewildering that you gain new respect for heralds.
In short, the sight down in the valley is a dazzling kaleidoscope.
Underneath the massive tower, your convoy draws up in a reserved location, and Lady Marna sends for you to join her. Mother greets the lord of the castle, a grizzled old knight named Sir Finn, who remarks on how much you have grown. He smiles, and you sieze upon the tatters of an old memory, Finn grinning over his shoulder as he rode off with Father and Luther to the war. You look around, and see many other faces and landmarks that you feel as though you ought to recall, but not quite. Recollection is always just beyond reach. Eerily, though, you almost expect to spot Father standing among them, so powerfully do these forgotten people and places evoke his memory somehow.
Between recent trauma, wisps of old memories, the flashy colours, the noisy tumultous crowds... Your mind is completely distracted until Finn begs his leave of the conversation.
"Farewell, Milady, until the Grand Feast this evening! I trust you shall be well-supplied in diversions in the mean-time. Today are the brawling matches, the stone-lifting contest, and the pie-eating competition!"
Lady Marna's entourage begins to dissolve according to its own tastes. Robard Pike cracks his knuckles and heads off to the
brawling matches, his son Cadmon in tow; Watkin Stout waves Brond to follow him to the
stone-lifting contest; and Hammy, whose father stayed behind in the kitchens, nevertheless licks his chops and hobbles toward the
pie-eating competition.
But what do
you do? You can attend all the contests for a little bit, one for the full time, or you can choose something else entirely. You could check the
preparations for your mummery with Symeon; or
escort Gervaise to the library; or accompany Mother, who smiles in anticipation of
visiting the bustling marketplace filled with exotic goods from foreign lands. You could stroll through the tents of the knights, taking in the pretty colours and
heraldry with Armaut. On your way down the ridge to the city, your attention was caught by a large congregation of peasants
listening to a preacher that inflamed them to loud shouts of anger. So much to choose, so little time!
That was a long and rough birth, but here we are at last. Have fun at the fair! Huzzah! Huzzah! Much rejoicing!
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Topic: Heirship: A Suggestion Game (Read 30441 times)